Marine Le Pen faces jailtime for showing ISIS atrocities

Marine Le Pen could face up to three years in prison for tweets from 2015. | Source: Shutterstock

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen faces three years imprisonment and a possibly €75,000 ($90,000) fine over tweets she shared four years ago showing ISIS atrocities.

The 50-year-old former presidential candidate, President of the National Rally political party (previously named National Front), is being prosecuted for distributing violent images, few weeks after the Paris terror attacks in November 2015, where 130 people were killed, according to reports.

She was charged last Thursday following her 2015 tweets that showed executions by IS extremists, including the killing of American reporter James Foley. The charges pose a slap on the French parliament whose party is still in crisis after losing to President Emmanuel Macron in 2015. Last year, she faulted a court judgment which ordered a psychiatric test in what appears to be part of a broader investigation into her tweets. She described the ongoing investigation as being politically persecuted.

Beyond the anti-ISIS tweets, Le Pen is also under a formal investigation over her alleged misuse of European Parliament funds while she was an MEP. Investigators are examining claims that 5 million euros ($4.4m) of parliamentary funding went to National Front assistants not working for MEPs but instead working on party business in France.